Around the World in Fifty Days
I am way above cloud cover. I can see the arc of the earth. I am, admittedly, a little drunk and I can feel the red wine dancing in my lips. My feelings about spending the past year living in a place such as the Arabian Gulf propelled me into fantastic imaginations of what I wanted my return home to be, and yet now that it is over, as I bend back into the planet and face my return to the gulf, something is missing.
Everything changes; it’s just whether or not you notice it.
I sealed my apartment, dust-proofed it as best as possible, shut everything down, didn’t look back. I landed in Istanbul (not Constantinople), Turkey and made friends with four Romanian girls at a train station. I explored the Blue Mosque and the Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia), the streets and parks of this ancient city with them at my side, laughed and made jokes and then in the covered archways of the bustling bazaars we said goodbye forever. I will most likely never see them again. That happens to me all the time. I got back on the plane.
I stopped in Singapore (again) and spent a week with my brother Mark and his girlfriend Alison. We went out, and ended up getting locked inside a compound after visiting some friends. We climbed and jumped a fence and I landed hard on some concrete with my left foot. It bruised badly. My feet are covered in scars and cracks, bruises and stories of kilometres they have touched. They keep moving, and after taking it easy for a few days I hoped they would be ready for the next leg of my journey. I transferred in Hong Kong. I transferred in Vancouver. I found myself in Whitehorse, Yukon, meeting my father. Nursing a limp and missing my luggage, I proceeded to drink as much Canadian beer as possible and make desperate phone calls to Air Canada. We were a day away from driving into Alaska, and without my gear it was going to be a very, very difficult trip back… we had planned to hike over the old US gold rush trails and mountain passes back into Canada over the next several days.
I waited out the arrival of my gear and missed my ride to Alaska, but a few hours after everyone else departed one of my backpacks arrived. Armed with at least a backpack and boots, I rented some basic gear and put together my supplies. I made some calls around the neighbourhood and hired the local preacher’s daughter to drive me to Skagway, Alaska, just in time to get a trail pass from a girl at the supposed-to-be-closed ranger station and a ride with Ruth, an eccentric old lady in a beat up Chevrolet van who told me her life’s story in an Arkansas drawl and showed me pictures of an albino bear she had encountered in the forest. I met up with the rest of our small hiking group at a campsite near the trail head just before sundown, the night before our trek.
We suited up and hit the trail by dawn. Our first day would be our hardest, our packs heaviest (in excess of 25kg) and our trail the longest. Although subsequent days promised the most arduous routes, the 20km distance to our planned camp site was rife with altitude changes and tested my legs (let alone my fifty-six year old father’s) over the twelve hours of hiking it required. We passed through beautiful forests (oh lively forests, how I’d missed you) and watched the clouds whisk across the tops of mountains revealing the rarely sighted ancient turquoise of a mountain-clinging glacier. We explored the ruins of Canyon City and pushed on for Sheep Camp.
Our only real trial of the day (apart from the length) was the crossing of a single glacial stream, the bridge having washed out. We stripped to our underwear and dropped in, sighing with relief in its modest depth while simultaneously sucking in breath from its frigid temperatures. We ran a line across the stream as a guide and carried our gear across.
We broke our fast with groans and stretches the next day, intimidated by the climb that lay ahead of us. Our destination would be the Canadian border and “Happy Camp”, the other side of the famous mountain pass dubbed “the Golden Stairs”. We headed out at the break of dawn, adamant to be through the avalanche chute and onto the Stairs by mid-day. The Golden Stairs earned its name from the steps that gold prospectors painstakingly carved into the snow and ice of the pass. For us the climb was snow free, but that left climbing up the 45-degree angle landslide of boulders as the only option.
I loved it. My favorite part of the hike, we hauled on hands and knees over rocks and rusting prospecting equipment abandoned from days long past. Summiting the route, we turned to reveal a cloud-ensconced valley behind us, and with the taste of triumph warming our shivering bodies we stepped over the Canadian border and descended into the more temperate Yukon tundra and began to leave behind the wild winds of the summit.
The next few days were spent at moderate pace, basking in the beauty of our changing environments. From great glacial lakes across frozen tundra into lush forests and the returning signs of civilization we continued in a dream of times long past. No streams yielded gold to my eager hands but fresh spring water and the purest air of the Canadian North cradled my imagination and embraced my return home for the summer. In the end we pushed into Bennett for vegetarian stew and coffee to restore our strength for the final leg along the train tracks to our waiting rides, although we were relegated to a small room at the back of the train station; apparently we alienated the American tourists who paid thousands of dollars to come by train to see the mountains from a distance and eat their stew with silver spoons.
Well, we probably smelled pretty bad.
My travels continued with reunions in Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax before arriving home for a few short weeks of relaxation and celebration. All too quickly I had to leave everyone behind again and face the airports of Montreal, Frankfurt, and Doha. I had circled the world in a summer, and returning to work I was already preparing for the next destination. The cliff tops and besieged history of the Mediterranean island of Malta are calling to me, and visions of India and Iran tempt my future…
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